Heavenly Creatures

Heavenly Creatures is the whirling, soaring rhapsody that ensues when two misfit imaginations suddenly fit - and lock into a single, gloriously empowering vision.

Heavenly Creatures, New Zealand, 1994

Director: Peter Jackson
Production co: Wingnut Films
Producer: Jim Booth
Screenplay: Frances Walsh, Peter Jackson
Director of photography: Alun Bollinger
Production designer: Grant Major
Editor: Jamie Selkirk
Costume designer: Ngila Dickson
Prosthetics and effects: Richard Taylor, Tania Rodger
Visual effects by Weta Ltd
Music composed by Peter Dasent

With: Melanie Lynskey (Pauline), Kate Winslet (Juliet), Sarah Pierse (Honora), Diana Kent (Hilda), Clive Merrison (Henry), Simon O’Connor (Herbert), Jed Brophy (John/Nicholas), Kirsty Ferry (Wendy), Adnrew Saunders (Diello)

35mm, colour, 108 minutes, CinemaScope, PG

Awards: Silver Lion, Venice Film Festival 1994, NZFTA 1995 Best Cinematography, Alun Bollinger

Pauline and Juliet are two imaginative but seemingly normal teenagers. What sets them apart is that they murder Pauline's mother. Heavenly Creatures is based on the true story, set in Christchurch in 1954, of two girls, Juliet Hulme and Pauline Rieper, who murdered one of their mothers – one of the most bizarre and notorious cases in New Zealand's history. The girls came from very different backgrounds but shared an outrageous love of fantasy and writing. Their friendship quickly blossomed into an exclusive society of two, with the girls creating a complex fantasy life that included a made-up religion, Mario Lanza and a mythical kingdom. The film is a study of an extraordinary friendship; a joyous, exhilarating relationship between two teenage girls, filled with humour, intelligence and two wonderful imaginations – and the tragic outcome of that relationship.

“You have to adore a movie in which one of the characters refers to Orson Welles as ‘It.’ Based on the infamous 1954 matricide in New Zealand involving two ninth-grade schoolgirls, Peter Jackson's stunning Heavenly Creatures tells the story of an uncommonly powerful love. When Pauline and Juliet are together, the wind is filled with butterflies and the trumpet call of Mario Lanza, ‘the greatest tenor in the whole world!!’ Their universe is an exclusive realm of two, existing half in reality where they are ostracized as peculiar, half in fantasy, where they escape to a highly evolved system of dream lovers and romantic alter egos. The film begins with Pauline (Melanie Lynskey), a miserable child whose mother runs a boardinghouse. In the photo for her class at her proper girls' school in Christchurch, New Zealand, she sticks out amid all the blond hair and proud smiles like a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake (with apologies to Raymond Chandler). She's the fat one in the back, the disaster, the smudge with the ugly scowl and unruly black curls. Because of a bone disease that left her with brittle legs, Pauline is unable to share in the sunny, athletic life of her classmates. Then one day her life is changed forever, when a new student named Juliet (Kate Winslet) joins her in her private war against the bores and commoners of Christchurch. Like Pauline, Juliet thumbs her nose with proud disdain at parochial Christchurch society. But, unlike her new friend, Juliet is not an ugly duckling, but a kind of fairy princess who plucks Pauline from her lily pad, kisses her, and transforms her. Because she suffers from tuberculosis, Juliet has had to spend almost as much time in the hospital as Pauline, and the girls' common status as invalids sparks a friendship that grows into a murderous passion. Jackson, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay, moves through each of these phases with daring and imagination. His camera follows his lovers as they run breathless through the woods before collapsing into each other's arms at the end of the day, spent from the exertions of their special bond. To his credit, Jackson doesn't patronize this romance as a girlish crush gone ballistic, or pigeonhole it merely as ‘lesbian.’ These girls are in love and, clearly, he envies them their abandon and their complete, unguarded commitment to each other. In Jackson's view, theirs is a great romance that, unfortunately, others were not equipped to deal with. Perhaps, if the world were more enlightened, more flexible, things might not turn out as gruesomely as they do. The problems begin when Juliet's parents begin to see the girls' relationship as "unwholesome." Because of marital problems, her parents are returning to England and plan to send Juliet to South Africa. Rather than be separated, the girls devise an elaborate plan to, as Pauline says it, ‘moider mother’ and escape to Hollywood. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of movies have been made about girlfriends and their unique bond, but I can't think of another one where the topic is addressed more frankly or openly. Though the film's subject is sensationalistic in the extreme, Jackson's style is poetic. He presents Pauline and Juliet, who eventually returns to England, where she becomes an author of mystery novels, as singularly blessed. And he raises the question of whether there is any love purer or more gratifying than this same-sex soul-mating. Because their love ends in murder, it's at least implied that the romance is tainted somehow. Does the fault lie with the girls, or with the cramped morality of the time? Thankfully, this powerful, evocative movie leaves the question wide open.” — Hal Hinson, Washington Post, 23/11/1994

“Peter Jackson was outrageous before, but the outrageousness of his first G-rated movie is something else entirely: he catches us up in the heart-thumping breathlessness of two schoolgirls, giddy with joy and fright at the brilliance of each other's romantic aspirations. Heavenly Creatures is the whirling, soaring rhapsody that ensues when two misfit imaginations suddenly fit - and lock into a single, gloriously empowering vision. Theirs is certainly not the Christchurch of punts and daffodils being perpetrated in the 50s Pictorial Parade with which Jackson introduces his setting. But it may be the equally improbable city where a schoolgirl choir imprisons the lilt of a gospel hymn in prim, clipped elocution: you can't always tell when Christchurch is being refracted through the protagonists' conviction that they live in the stuffiest city on earth. But you know for sure when their romantic vision of the place prevails. Not since Utu have there been such ecstatic flights of fancy in New Zealand filmaking. And there's never been such light-headed delight in cinema magic. Special effects conjure up castles in the air, then rush you through their portals and up, up, up to the parapets. And just as you're thinking, whoooaa, this is getting nutty, there's the frisson as you remember: this 'intense' friendship between the teenage girls Pauline Rieper and Juliet Hulme is famous for a reason. Together they hatched a plot to murder Pauline's mother - and then, God help us, murder her is what they did. Forty years on, this story is still recalled in New Zealand as a warning of the dangers of 'unnatural' closeness between girls: what possessed these daughters of darkness? Jackson, who actively sought infamy in his earlier films, has had ample opportunity to test the starch of polite society's aversion. His own frenzied, transforming visions have not been universally applauded - as the Festival can attest. This may help explain the utter clarity of his imaginative identification with the girls. It does not account for the wonderful new fluency in this work, the assurance of tone, or the refinement and ebullient funniness of a script – co-written with Fran Walsh – which shows us plenty that the fantasists don't see. His heavenly creatures may have been tragically misunderstood, but we're given a fair and touching understanding of the decorous little English province that they so unnerved and which they helped to unmake. For a film that takes its audience on such an emotional joyride, Heavenly Creatures is rich, detailed and resonant on many levels. There's not the space here to enumerate the security and vividness with which the performances are etched into an apparently insecure surface. The two young leads embody their characters indelibly; the film seems to swirl about them. Alun Bollinger's breathtaking Cinemascope is an equally crucial player and may start an international tourist stampede to the Port Hills when Heavenly Creatures becomes the sensational new movie from New Zealand in cinemas around the world. There's no debate; this one was nourished all the way to startling fruition in New Zealand. And it is, in the best possible way, sensational.” — Bill Gosden, New Zealand Film Festivals, 1994

Screenings: Heavenly Creatures screened on 20 March 2005 in a season curated by film reviewer and Film Archive board chairperson, Mike Nicolaidi; on 23 August 2006 in the Friends of the Film Archive's Based on a True Story season; on 20 June 2007 to honour cinematographer Alun Bollinger in the Arts Foundation Laureates season; and on 27-29 March 2009.